y of translation as with the general difficulty of
"forging" verse. Whether a man employs Latin, French, or the vernacular,
he continues,

Be it in balede, vers, Rime, or prose,
He most torn and wend, metrely to close.[50]

Of explicit comment on general principles, then, there is but a small
amount in connection with Middle English translations. Incidentally,
however, writers let fall a good deal of information regarding their
theories and methods. Such material must be interpreted with
considerable caution, for although the most casual survey makes it clear
that generally the translator felt bound to put into words something of
his debt and his responsibility to his predecessors, yet one does not
know how much significance should attach to this comment. He seldom
offers clear, unmistakable information as to his difficulties and his
methods of meeting them. It is peculiarly interesting to come upon such
explanation of processes as appears at one point in Capgrave's _Life of
St. Gilbert_. In telling the story of a miracle wrought upon a sick man,
Capgrave writes: "One of his brethren, which was his keeper, gave him
this counsel, that he should wind his head with a certain cloth of linen
which St. Gilbert wore. I suppose verily," continues the translator, "it
was his alb, for mine author here setteth a word 'subucula,' which is
both an alb and a shirt, and in the first part of this life the same
author saith that this holy man wore next his skin no hair as for the
hardest, nor linen as for the softest, but he went with wool, as with
the mean."[51] Such care for detail suggests the comparative methods
later employed by the translators of the Bible, but whether or not it
was common, it seldom found its way into words. The majority of writers
acquitted themselves of the translator's duty by introducing at
intervals somewhat conventional references to source, "in story as we
read," "in tale as it is told," "as saith the geste," "in rhyme I read,"
"the prose says," "as mine author doth write," "as it tells in the
book," "so saith the French tale," "as saith the Latin." Tags like these
are everywhere present, especially in verse, where they must often have
proved convenient in eking out the metre. Whether they are to be
interpreted literally is hard to determine. The reader of English
versions can seldom be certain whether variants on the more ordinary
forms are merely stylistic or result from actual differences in
s